


Evocation / Transmutation

by Poetry



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Backstory, Canon Trans Character, Family Feels, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 21:16:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11677236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry
Summary: Lup gave Taako the gift of fire. Taako gave Lup the gift of change.





	Evocation / Transmutation

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings for misgendering and child neglect.

Lup gave Taako the gift of fire.

The first relative they were passed off to was an aunt named Saebler, who did the costumes, staging, and makeup for an acting troupe. Under the touch of Saebler’s clever hands, they became different children. She made charcoal into eyeliner to bring their deep dark eyes into sharp relief, and crushed beetles and beeswax into stains for their lips.

To Aunt Saebler, it was a game to keep the children busy. To Lup and Taako, it was magic.

When Taako put on the right makeup and the right costume, he wasn’t some annoying kid underfoot – he was an actor, a spectacle, a source of delight for everyone in the villages they passed through. And when Lup put on hers – subtler touches than Taako’s, but powerful all the same – the people around her saw the fire of her truth burning inside her, and didn’t put it out with the wrong words, the wrong spaces around her body.

The acting troupe traveled north, and though the weather grew cold, Lup and Taako refused to take off the dresses they’d patched out of spare bits of fabric from Saebler’s costume-making. In a town called Iskryn, Saebler turned them out into the churchyard of the temple of Azuth to learn magic from the clerics.

“Fuck, it’s cold,” Lup said, watching the lacy hem of her dress soak through with snow. “Why are we here instead of the caravan?”

“I think ol’ Saebler wants to go pick up guys at the tavern,” Taako observed. “Which is fine, I guess, but it does leave us… here.”

Lup looked way way up at the facade of the temple, which had sigils of a hand surrounded by flame. She didn’t really want to set her hands on fire, but at least they’d be warm then. She made an executive decision to walk on in and hope Taako would take that as his cue to follow.

The clerics weren’t teaching magic lessons. They were mostly sweeping out dark corners and scraping ice off the windows. “Cleric life sure looks glamorous,” Taako muttered behind her. But whatever Saebler was or wasn’t doing at the tavern, she’d brought the two of them here to learn magic, and Lup would be damned if she didn’t learn the _hell_ out of it.

She stormed up to a young gnome cleric lighting candles at the altar with easy flicks of his fingers and said, “Your god has flaming hands, right? Teach us how to make fire.”

The cleric blinked at Lup. “Uhh. Do you have any spell components or anything? Wands?”

Lup spread her arms and spun around in her dress. “Do I look like I have a wand anywhere?”

“Okaaaay,” the cleric said. “Um. Why don’t you girls go get some cedar bark and waxberries, and uh, I’ll see what I can do.”

Lup only vaguely knew what those were, but she dragged Taako back outside to go get them. “He thought I was a _girl_ ,” Taako said to her, delighted. “Isn’t that _great_?”

“He thought I was a girl too,” Lup said. She still wasn’t used to that, even though it was happening more often now, with Aunt Saebler’s help.

“That’s different,” Taako said. “I _fooled_ him. He got you right.”

They scraped bark off cedar trees with their fingernails and told apart the waxberries from the other winter fruits by crushing them in their fingers and feeling the thickness of the wax on their skins. They came back to the temple, their hands red with blood and waxberry juice, the spell components folded up in the skirts of their dresses. By then they’d gathered a following of village kids who were curious about what they were doing. Taako made up a story about being chosen by the clerics for a special mission, while Lup just smiled and tried to look mysterious.

“Wow,” said the gnome cleric, when they all tromped in. “You were serious, huh. Why don’t I demonstrate that spell right now? You girls look real cold. Like, maybe I should be charged with reckless child endangerment kind of cold.”

He took the cedar shavings and berries in his palm, blew on them, and they disappeared into a plume of hot air that made Lup’s ear-tips and toes tingle with the feeling coming back to them. “All right. All you kids take some of these spell components, and think about fire. Like, _really_ think about it. I’ll be in the back cleaning up, but y’know, call me if you have any problems.”

Lup and Taako were the only kids who’d actually gathered any spell components. When the village kids begged for them, both of them shared theirs around. Looking back, it would be the last time Lup ever saw Taako share something with anyone besides her without putting on an act like it wasn’t really sharing at all.

She tried to concentrate on the fire, but the kids kept talking. “Why’d the clerics pick _you_ , Taako? Are you really good at fire? Did you make that dress? It looks like you got it from the trash. You’re one of those actors, aren’t you? My mama says you’re dirty.”

Suddenly, Lup didn’t need to think about fire. She _was_ fire. It roared out past her skin and scorched the air. “Taako’s dress is NOT TRASH.”

The air smelled like berry juice and cedar. Lup’s hands were empty. The village kids were red-faced – because the top layer of their skin had all been scorched off.

“Actually,” Taako said mildly, “Aunt Saebler was about to throw the fabric away. But we used it to make dresses instead, and she says that’s not trash, it’s called ‘upcycling.’”

Lup doesn’t remember the cleric’s name, only that he got fired from the temple for gross negligence. But she can never forget the inferno she learned herself to be, that day.

 

 

  
Taako gave Lup the gift of change.

On the road, the acting troupe crossed paths with a traveling circus, which had a bigger company and nicer duds. Still, the two caravans decided to do a joint show in the next town. Once Taako and Lup finished cleaning up after the big pre-rehearsal meal, Taako took Lup to the circus’s costumer to see what they could do.

“Hi, Taako and Lup here. Our aunt does the makeup and costumes for our troupe,” Taako told the dwarf, who had some sick ribbons braided in their beard. “We’re her apprentices,” he lied, “but TBH your costumes are way cooler than hers, so we thought we’d come over and see what we can learn from you.”

“Well duh our looks are cooler,” the dwarf said. “Your aunt doesn’t use any magic. Only a wizard can put on a _real_ show.”

“We know magic,” Lup said, opening her hand to show a tiny dancing spark.

“Put that out right now, kid! No open flames near the costumes!”

Taako grabbed Lup’s hand and closed it around the flame. “Don’t you dare screw this up for me, Lup,” he whispered in her ear. One of the nice things about being an elf was that it was really easy for people to whisper in your ear. Out loud he said, “So, how about it? Can you teach us better than our aunt?”

“Hell yeah I can. Ask anyone, Raz the dwarf does the best stage on the whole circuit.” Raz waved their hand at a harlequin costume, and it changed red and white motley to black and green. “You’re going to have to get your own spell components, though. I got a show to do.”

Taako sighed. “Fine. What do we need?”

Ten minutes later they were in the woods by the side of the road and Lup was flinging lances of fire at passing birds. “You know,” Taako said, “we could just look for feathers on the _ground_.”

“You’re just jealous you can’t throw fire,” Lup said. “If we’re going to get feathers, we might as well get some tasty meat while we’re at it.”

“I can _too_ throw fire,” Taako said, and in the end Lup nailed a turkey who got smoked out by the ever so slightly out of control fire Taako had set in the woods. While the rest of the caravan ran around yelling about smoke and setting up a bucket line, Taako and Lup plucked the turkey in the kitchen, started it brining for later, and brought the feathers to Raz.

Raz narrowed their eyes at the two of them. “These feathers smell like smoke.”

“Pretty sure everything smells like smoke at this point,” Lup said.

“Fine,” Raz said. “Here’s how you make things look like other things.”

The night after the big show, Taako and Lup slept in Raz’s wagon. When they woke up in the morning, the acting troupe had moved on, including Aunt Saebler.

“You think she heard I liked Raz’s costumes better than hers?” Taako asked Lup as they packed up the kitchen things for the road.

Lup bumped her shoulder against his. “Hey. I liked them better too. And it’s Aunt Saebler. Who really knows? Maybe she just got tired of having to find someone to look after us every time she wanted to go to the tavern.”

The halfling in charge of the circus popped her head in the kitchen. “Hey. You two. Sad little orphan boys? Can you speed this along? We gotta hit the road.”

“We are not _sad little orphans_ ,” Lup said.

“We’re not _boys_ ,” Taako said.

“I don’t care what you are, just get a move on.”

Taako became obsessed with learning how to change how they looked. They both learned a lot of magic from Raz, but Taako _was_ trickery and changeability in the same way Lup was fire. He made them look human, pale-skinned, blue-haired, everything they weren’t, and in disguise they weren’t the circus’s sad little orphan boys – they were strangers, and they could be anyone or anything at all.

One day they came into Raz’s wagon as red dragonborn, their silk skirts falling weirdly over their long tails. Raz eyed the long red crests on their heads and said, “You know, you don’t have to look like boys if you don’t want to.”

It occurred to Taako for the first time that Raz had never said anything about whether they were a girl or a boy. All dwarves could grow beards, so that didn’t mean much. Maybe Raz was neither. It was nice to know that was an option.

Lup was frozen in a way she never was. So Taako said, “Sounds like a good spell. Tell me more.”

Raz cast the spell on themself several times as a demonstration, going both ways – first they went curvy and smooth-skinned, then they went blocky and square-jawed. The beard stayed the same the whole time, though.

“Cool, cool,” Taako said casually, only looking at Lup out of the corner of his eye. “And how long that does last, exactly?”

“It’s like any transmutation magic you cast on a willing creature,” Raz said, sounding like they were quoting from some kind of book that held all the rules of magic, but written out in a really dry and boring way. “If you cast instantaneously, it won’t last more than an hour. But if you make it into an extended magic ritual, it can last a lot longer.”

“Great, thanks Raz, I’ll owe you an extra cheese roll at dinner,” Taako said. He grabbed Lup’s arm. “Lup and I are gonna go practice now. Bye!”

Well out of earshot of the caravan, Taako dispelled the magic, looked into his twin’s face, and said, “Talk to me, Lup.”

Lup ducked her head. “I guess that’ll be a good disguise when we need one, huh?”

“Don’t be fucking ridiculous,” Taako said. “It’s not a disguise. Puberty ain’t a picnic for anybody but you, like, _extra_ hate it. I know you’re a girl. Just help me cast this stupid ritual and no random clown we meet on the road will ever treat you like a boy again.”

Lup looked up, blinking away tears. “What’s the ritual?”

“I think that’s kinda up to you, sis. This magic is for _you_. So you tell me. What kind of girl are you?”

Taako and Lup filched the spell components from other caravans they met on the road. They got a bag of yellow diamond dust, a totally sick spiked leather chestplate with room for boobs, a long red feather that looked like it came from a phoenix even though it definitely didn’t, and a letter a lady knight had written to her sister. At night, Taako made a circle around Lup’s bedroll in diamond dust and laid the other items around it. The circle glowed when Taako cast, but nothing seemed to change.

“It’s _fine_ ,” Lup said, pinning Taako to his bedroll when he wouldn’t stop pacing around the circle and poking at it. “You’ll get it right next time.”

He cast the ritual every night, and slowly they realized that Lup was changing after all. There was definitely nobody calling them _sad little orphan boys_ anymore, that was for damn sure. “This puberty sucks too,” Lup told Taako one day, prodding at her boobs like they might jump off her chest and bite her on the nose. “But not nearly as bad as the other one. Thanks.”

Taako felt for that liquid place inside himself that refused to ever take a shape, no matter what the world wanted it to look like. With a twirl of his index finger, he transmuted the collar of Lup’s shirt so it grew right up over her face, leaving her spluttering incoherently through a mouthful of cloth. He grinned. “You’re welcome.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Evocation / Transmutation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13049793) by [growlery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery)




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